


a linear history of love and the empire state

by magicandlight



Series: The States [14]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: F/F, F/M, Hamilton!, New York Centric, late Pride Month, yo non romantic love is important too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 03:18:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15161357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicandlight/pseuds/magicandlight
Summary: Alfred comes out of nowhere and promises Lucky things she should know better than to trust, but for some reason, she does anyway.





	a linear history of love and the empire state

_one_

Alfred comes out of nowhere and promises Lucky things she should know better than to trust, but for some reason, she does anyway. He offers _home safety peace security family_  and the part of Lucky that was still soft  _wants_  it. He buys her food and doesn't expect apologies for the blood dripping down his knuckles where she cut him and gives her a real name. 

 

_two_

Brooke sees the hair first, and her apathy disappears, replaced by curiosity because out of all the colonies, none shared her ink black messy hair.

Then he turns, and she looks at the other colony and remembers that pull and thinks  _oh_.

_Brother brother brother you had a brother and you never bothered to find him you left him alone because you only cared about yourself_

He smiles at her and extends his hand. "Hi. I'm Nicholas."

She forces her own smile. "Brooke."

 

_three_

She doesn't tell him because she doesn't know him.

But then they become friends, and she's afraid of losing him. 

 

_four_

When she first meets Adrien, she scowls and glares, because the first thing he ever says to her is something meant to be flirty and flattering and trust is still difficult for her.

He ropes her and Nicky into a prank on Cecy and suddenly he's their best friend. 

 

_five_

Well, she definitely can't tell Nicky  _now_ , not when they're friends now and Adrien rounds them out and they're perfect. 

 

_six_

Rebellion curls up behind her ribs but obedience burns in the back of her mind and it hurts near constantly.

Brooke looks in the mirror and her once-cerulean eyes (the one feature she shared with Alfred) are tinged with green and she thinks  _damn the consequences_  and cuts her hair and goes to join a revolution. 

 

_seven_

For once, they were allowed in the conference room.

Brooke stays quiet, silently memorizing every word said.

And then "...prepare a plan of confederation for the newly independent states."

The words rattle around her head for a while until the click together.

Brooke opens her mouth, but Sam beats her to it. "We're going to be united?"

Sam Adams answers. "We're planning on independence for all of you- thirteen free and independent states- and then linking you into an alliance based on trade and amity. In other words, a loose confederation."

Confederation.

Family.

Brooke chances a glance around at the other colonies- states, soon.

 _Family_.

 

_eight_

Her hands start shaking as the British close in and the part of her that never truly stopped being Lucky is afraid.

You can't defend yourself with shaking hands.

She sleeps with her bayonet under her pillow.

Then the British take Long Island, and she can't stop the trembling. They are too close to her heart, too close to New York City.

Washington keeps a close eye on her, and she knows he's seen her trembling hands. She can't make it stop. Alfred keeps giving her these looks like she's about to fall apart any second and she's never hated her siblings (with the exception of Will, occasionally) but she hates them now-hates the pitying looks. It feels patronizing, even though she knows it wasn't meant that way.

So maybe, she goes and finds out how much liquor it takes to actually get herself drunk (a lot). Maybe she puts on her dresses sometimes and picks up soldiers as easily as she smiles. Maybe she invites pretty men and prettier women into her bed without an ounce of shame. Maybe Will says something snarky to her and she punches him, starts a brawl in the State House.

_Everyone has different ways of coping, right?_

 

_nine_

The British take New York City and she  _screams_.

And then the pain dulls out to a terrible terrible ache and she can at least breathe again and she curls up, drawing her knees close and crosses her arms over her chest and wishes she had a knife right now because she has always been more at ease with one in her hand.

She looks at her trembling fingers and thinks its probably for the best she doesn't have one.

Alfred comes, and Brooke is feeling angry and a little vindictive so she doesn't look at him. It isn't his fault, but he's the only one around. She can physically feel his stare though, and that annoys her enough to break the silence.

"Don't look at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like I'm broken. Damaged goods. Like I'm the runt of litter and you're trying to figure how to put me out of my misery. I'm not dead. And I'm not that easy to break."

_ten_

It takes a burnt city to tear through the fog in her mind, but it isn't enough.

They retreat, but Nicky is waiting for them and he holds her as she cries and lets her hide her face in his shoulder because he knows how hard it is for her to show weakness. 

 

_eleven_

Alfred benches her for recklessness.

And then, she meets Alexander.

She sees him across the room and her mind goes,  _oh, hello, I remember you. You stole canons from the British and defended the City_.

(And then she falls for him.)

 

_twelve_

See, Brooke has slept with a lot of people. She'd rebelled and then realized it was quite possible her life had a time limit and decided to live life as fully as possible.

But none of them had ever gotten more than a fleeting moment of her attention. Alexander manages to capture her full attention and her heart without even trying. 

 

_thirteen_

Part of the problem, Brooke admits, is that she thinks everything is art. Alexander could destroy her and she'd still look at his cornflower eyes and red hair and think about painting him. She'd still spend congress meetings sketching out his smile.

Her blatant adoration makes Nicky gag, but whatever. Nicky sort of gets it- Alexander had seen the girl in her room and hadn't even blinked twice and accepted Laurens being gay and that tolerance was something they didn't see much these days.

Most of the founding fathers chose to look past it for the sole purpose that they were immortals created from ideas and not truly human and all that, but they weren't  _accepting_ by any means. They looked down their noses at Cam and Monty holding hands and frowned at every hickey one of the girls sported.

In their mind, boys didn't kiss boys and girls just laid back and thought of England or whatever the fuck they taught these days. Girls weren't promiscuous and boys weren't gay. They could make enough of an exception to pretend they didn't know about any of the girls fighting, but that could just be because they got  _results_  instead of any actual tolerance.

Alexander had always been intriguing, of course. He'd been interesting since he stole those British canons from the Battery, but at some point, he went from _interesting_  to  _number one on the 'would bang if given the chance'_  list.

And then he'd casually mentioned that he'd thought she wouldn't like him because he wasn't  _really_  one of hers, and Brooke had raised an unimpressed eyebrow and said  _you're a New Yorker_ and he'd looked at her like she was some sort of miracle and  _she was so incredibly damned._

 

_fourteen_

The British take Philadelphia from Will and everyone just expects him to be fine.

Brooke knows better than anyone what the ache of war-time occupation feels like.

So she sits with him and hands him this flower that is his as much as roses are hers and violets are Nicky's and offers compassion for a boy who had knocked out two of her baby teeth with his fist. 

 

_fifteen_

Nicky helps her run away so she can fight at Saratoga, and she almost tells him.

There isn't enough time.

(They win Saratoga, and they win French support, and Alfred looks at her with something like pride.)

 

_sixteen_

She doesn't like Will much, but he's still her brother. He's still the state that shares her border and her ally and all she can think is  _Alfred would be heartbroken_.

She sees the rifle, she sees the familiar blonde hair, and she's moving before she can fully calculate the danger.

It's something straight out of their colony days when she tackles him.

Distantly, she registers the report of a rifle against the sounds of battle.

Will shakes her, and she can't figure out why he looks so frantic or why her hands are coming away red or why everything feels so far away and then nothing. 

 

_seventeen_

There's nothing until suddenly there isn't anymore.

She gasps for air, feels her lungs expand, and they shouldn't do that, she should be dead, except she isn't.

Nicky is standing in the doorway, eyes shining, and Alfred is holding her a little too tight but she isn't going to complain because _she's not dead_.

(Later, Nicky will hug her and she'll choke out  _little brother_  and they'll both cry and for once tears won't feel like weakness.)

 

_eighteen_

She died, she lived, and yet for some reason she's still in love with Alexander.

Nicky says  _well there's no accounting for taste_  and she kicks him and smiles because  _he's her little brother_.

The issue with loving Alexander is that Alexander Does Not Feel The Same Way. He might be Brooke's number one i-would-if-i-could, but she's not his. She is very firmly settled somewhere between friend and weird family member, and she can't even bring herself to resent that.

Brooke knows Alexander looks at her and sees a  _child_. A little girl who will never grow up.

So when he meets Eliza, Brooke is happy for them. She had held Eliza when she was still a tiny screaming thing and she couldn't think of anyone more perfect for him.

 

_nineteen_

They win the war and their independence and they're a real family and Scarlett hugs her so hard Brooke feels like she might suffocate and Nicky kisses her cheek and Will picks her up and spins her. 

 

_twenty_

Alexander invites her to the wedding.

So she goes and smiles and hugs Eliza and says hello to Schuyler (because it's still weird not calling him General) and Kitty. Brooke smiles so much her face hurts and sits and sketches out the dancing couples. Eliza stares at the gentle charcoal outlines of her and Alexander with the sappiest look for a while before she offers a compliment.

And then she goes home to her loft and cries until she can't anymore.

And then she pulls it together.

She contents herself with proximity. She isn't there when Philip is born, but she's there for Angelica. Brooke is there when Alexander Jr. is born two years later and James two years after that and John four years after James.

Brooke is happy, holding the babies and watching them smile when they see her, and she's terrified because Alexander and Eliza keep getting older but Brooke isn't. Brooke is almost two centuries old and stuck in a fifteen-year-old's body. Brooke is fifteen, holding the love of her life's fifth child, and realizing he's aging and she isn't.  


_twenty- one_

Brooke buries her feelings and joins Alexander's financial crusade.

He wants his debt plan to go through, and somehow, she'll find a way to make it happen.

In the end, she doesn't need to pull strings to get the plan through Congress.

Alexander finds a way. He goes to Jefferson and Madison and arranges a meeting.

 

_twenty- two_

With Jefferson and Madison comes Ginny.

Ginny complicates things because she can read Brooke far too well for her to be comfortable.

Ginny smirks when she gets the capital, and Brooke offers a half-smile.

Ginny still thinks Brooke had walked into this meeting not knowing that Alexander was about to trade away her chance to hold the capital.

She had known exactly what Alexander was going to offer.

Alexander was trading away a capital she was unlikely to ever truly hold for the ability to become a financial power.

It wasn't much of choice at all when it was put that way. 

 

_twenty- three_

Out of that compromise comes an unexpected ray of sunshine Alfred names Abigail.

Abigail is tiny and perfect and despite herself, Brooke is charmed.

She teaches her about art because she can't resist the way Abby tugs on her skirts when she paints and asks her about the colors. Brooke digs out old sets of paints and demonstrates technique and tells her about the great artists of the world.

Brooke painstakingly teaches Abby French because she is the capital and French is the  _lingua franca_  and she will be damned if Abby never gets into the politics of her own land. After she learns French to the point she wouldn't stand out in Paris, Abby comes to her with a map and says,  _show me all the important ones._ When Brooke points out the Empires, Abby nods, serious, and says,  _teach me those languages, too_. 

 

_twenty- four_

Philip is the variable that was never accounted for.

Philip is the boy who has the nerve to wait on her steps with a rose clutched in his hand, who looks at her and says _I like you_ like it's the most obvious thing ever. Philip is the boy who waltzes into her heart like he belongs there.

So she gives it a chance.

He's perfect and amazing and one of the best human beings she has known in her life, and by some miracle, he doesn't hate her after she tells him about her experience, about the men and women.

When William Stephen is born, she drags him across the city without an explanation and Alexander looks between them like he isn't sure whether to be proud or angry. He settles for neutrality instead and tries not to mention it as he hands her the baby.

Nicky, however, is the angriest he's ever been at her. He yells about the semi-permanence of humans and Brooke doesn't yell back. She kicks him out and stops speaking to him and when Adrien takes his side, she stops speaking to him too.

When the Reynolds Pamphlet comes out, Philip sends her a letter clearly written by shaking hands- _I can't believe it, and I hate to admit it, but my father took our name and broke it. What are we going to do, Brooke?_  A day later, he is in her arms and Brooke thinks she could burn the world for this boy. She fills half her sketchbook instead. He watches her draw and presses kisses to her fingertips. She helps him study and tells him about her memory and he looks at her and tells her  _she's the most amazing thing he's ever seen_  and she is so incredibly  _screwed_.

Brooke wants it to last forever.

It can't. She's always going to be the background of history, always there and rarely visible. Philip is the firstborn son of a founding father. Eventually, he has to actually go and live his life instead of cozy-ing it up with her.

Brooke doesn't account for the fact that Philip always does the unexpected.

 

_twenty- five_

There is a ring, and Philip is on one knee, and Brooke can't breathe.

"I know you can't promise me the rest of your life, but I can promise you mine. I can promise that I'll love you even when I'm old and grey, that I will stay as long as you will have me."

She doesn't know what to say.

Philip smiles even though he looks a little hurt. "I'll give you some time to decide."

 

_twenty- six_

Brooke never gets to tell Philip her answer.

She doesn't even get to say  _goodbye_.

She didn't even know that Philip was across the river dueling.

She didn't know that he was halfway across the city dying.

She didn't even know he was dead until _his little sister_  remembered she was someone who needed to be told.

Angelica tells her.

Brooke screams.

 

_twenty- seven_

She doesn't go to his funeral. She doesn't get up when she hears about Angelica's breakdown.

Nicky and Adrien come to drag her out of bed and she lets them because his side of the bed doesn't smell like him anymore. Brooke still refuses to leave her house.

Ironically, what forces her out is Philip.

She almost throws up when Nicky tells her what they named the baby. Instead, she's out the door, running across the city before she knows what she's doing.

It's tradition that Brooke is the fourth to hold the children. The midwife, Eliza, Alexander, her.

William Stephen lets her in. Alexander is clutching the baby like a lifeline but after a few tense seconds he passes him over.

Alexander's jaw tenses. "We named him Philip."

Brooke swallows and passes the baby back. She can't do this anymore. "I know." 

 

_twenty- eight_

She hates Philip's grave, but that doesn't stop her from bringing him roses and lilacs every year on their anniversary. Sometimes, she sits there and draws the things around her and somedays she talks and somedays she just lays there and stares at the sky.

(Two years later, she stands at a different grave in the pouring rain. "You bastard, what's Eliza going to do now? Philip is already- he's already-" She collapses into a sobbing puddle on Alexander's grave and Nicky has to come drag her home before she catches pneumonia.)

 

_twenty- nine_

Brooke visits the orphanage occasionally, and Eliza always smiles at her and Brooke always smiles back. Sometimes she draws the children. One day one asks her about a drawing and Brooke looks at the sketch of Philip and it hurts like a sucker punch to the ribs but she smiles and says it was her lover, once.

Eliza defends Alexander against the critics and Brooke punches Ginny when she has the nerve to say anything and then punches Scott too when he gets in the way. She knocks out Will's top right incisor when he brings up Philip and is unrepentant about all of it even when Alfred gives her a disappointed look. She looks her siblings in the eyes and silently dares them to insult a Hamilton in her presence.

Brooke helps Eliza and John organize Alexander's writings. When John starts burning letters because of their promiscuity- burning the truth of who Alexander  _was_ \- Brooke walks away from her Hamiltons and her Schuylers.

Philip and Alexander are gone. John hates her. Little Angelica has gone mad. Peggy had been dead for years and Angelica was grown-up and married. And Eliza, the one person she had left, refused to acknowledge her relationship with Philip or the ring she wore on a necklace.

She had tried to hold on to them for so long, and in the end, all it did was hurt her.

So Brooke walks away, and when the next generation is born they don't know who she is. 

 

_thirty_

Adrien is on the opposite side of the war, this time, instead of an unofficial ally.

He breaks her nose with the butt of his gun instead of shooting her, and she doesn't go for the throat when she swipes out with her knife.

It's as close to mercy as they can get.

 

_thirty- one_

DC burns around them, and Abby burns with it.

Brooke holds Ginny back from the fire and Ginny screams like she's being killed.

Ginny doesn't stop screaming until Scott comes out with a small form balanced between him and Will. 

 

_thirty- two_

Brooke helps Ginny cut Abby's hair after they realize those beautiful golden curls have melted together with ashes and burnt debris and aren't helping their fight to keep infection from her burns.

It is at once too similar to when the girls cut their hair for war and not similar at all. 

 

_thirty- three_

She sets arrowheads down on the nightstand and brushes a gentle hand over Abby's forehead.

She turns reflexively at the door opening and Will pauses in the threshold.

His gaze flickers over the arrowheads, over the other trinkets left on the nightstand to send a message of solidarity.

Brooke focuses on the quill in Will's hand. "Declaration?" She asks. Her voice wavers and she hates it.

Will swallows. "Yeah."

Brooke nods, and then turns away from Abigail. Will doesn't say anything when she leaves. 

 

_thirty- four_

Abby doesn't heal all the way. The burns leave scars all over her body, turn her hair auburn.

She stays blind, and Brooke wants to punch a hole into a wall.

Instead, she buys gloves. 

 

_thirty- five_

Scarlett literally walks into the open secret that is Brooke's sexuality.

She walks into the room where Brooke is kissing another girl during their week of meetings and stumbles out shocked apologies and disappears, leaving Brooke to track her down later.

Brooke keeps it quiet out of necessity. She knows that different gets you shunned at the very least, and she spent enough time on the streets to understand human cruelty intimately.

So it might be a secret from the human world, but it isn't with her family. If they asked, she would give them honesty. She just doesn't feel the need to just tell them.

It's a fact of her life. Her eyes are blue, her hair is black, she likes art, and she goes both ways.

 

_thirty- six_

She's known ever since she saw Seneca, with her dark eyes and dark hair and bright smile. And even after her silly crush on Seneca fades, and she gives her first kiss away to a pretty girl in the Iroquois tribe and her second to a boy with the darkest eyes she's ever seen in the Tuscarora tribe, no one took the time to explain to her what she is.

So when they left her, when they told her  _go-and-do-not-come-back_ , she didn't realize it is dangerous to be  _other_. Not until she felt their disgust and heard the awful words.

It hurt something, that these people who carry all this hate were hers too, were part of her too.

That hurt is the reason she immersed herself into the streets. Why she held her arms wide and embraced the words  _street-rat pickpocket Lucky_ whole-heartedly, because if her people were going to hateful she was going to give them a damned good reason.

She tells Scarlett as much when the other girl begins to seek her out, and Scarlett tells her about her Isabella in turn.

One day, Scarlett leans over to kiss her and Brooke lets her.

 

_thirty- seven_

Despite all assumptions otherwise, Brooke finds that sex with other personifications is too much trouble more often than not.

Mostly because they're the only people she can't outlive if something gets awkward.

She prefers her hookups casual and clueless, but there have been other personifications. Not as many as some of her siblings imply, but there have been a few.

Adrien is an occasional exception, David was a fun distraction, Cecilia was a one-off, and Brian was an experiment.

Scarlett is a bad decision. 

 

_thirty- eight_

Brooke knows she's devastatingly beautiful.

She knows this despite the scars etched into her skin and skinniness exposing the hard edges of bone.

A long time ago, she had hated the delicacy of her features, the gentle grace of her body. She had seen the way men eyed her, had seen the threat posed by lingering looks.

(She'd known what happened to pretty things that had no one to miss them even then, and she'd held her street rats tight and her bayonet tighter and kept watch through the night.)

These days, she just accepts it. Beauty is a weapon too, and the most colorful animals are the deadliest.

This, though, she never gets tired of this- the dazed look in a lover's eye when they look at her shamelessly naked for the first time.

Scarlett traces the scars on her back and Brooke whispers the names of battles like prayers.  _Saratoga. White Plains. Plattsburgh_. Brooke brushes her mouth over the patchy burns on her ribs and Scarlett chokes out  _Savannah 1796_.

Later, Scarlett will struggle to get her breath back enough to say  _teach me how you did that thing jesus that was brilliant_  and Brooke will grin and much later, when Scarlett ends things, Brooke will think that perhaps Scarlett wasn't too bad of a decision after all. 

 

_thirty- nine_

When Adam comes to get her, she doesn't know what to expect.

She looks at Sam, and knows just from the hollow numbness in her eyes.

Her mind recalls 1683 with startling cruelty. When she had failed to protect one of her street rats. What Jocelyn looked like after the man had taken all he wanted from her. The way she had wasted away and let herself starve. It drags 1791 with it, the way fear had radiated through her entire body when the drunk had grabbed her wrist and how very easy it had been to pull the bayonet from her boot and slash out. 

Sam is a portrait done in a palette of black and blue and hurt. The proof that she fought is in every broken bone and bruise and Brooke feels the rage burning her lungs from the inside out.

Sam doesn't look at her, just holds herself as she shudders in an undershirt borrowed from Connie and shorts from Adam.

Brooke curses aloud at the sight of the dark circular bruises all around her shoulders and neck even as her brain says  _hickeys_. She internalizes her anger at the hand shaped bruises on Sam's thighs and throat.

She lets Brooke pulls her arms away and brush her fingers over them, feeling for the familiar tickle of energy signaling healing in their kind.

It's strong at the break in her arm, but her arm is healing at an angle. Incorrectly. Brooke curses in Dutch.

Brooke refuses to do it before Sam is aware, so Brooke holds her hand in front of Sam's face until she looks at her.

"Your arm is healing wrong." Realization flickers in Sam's eyes, and Brooke knows that Sam knows it will have to rebroken and set. She says it anyway. "I have to break it again."

There's nothing for a long time before Sam jerks her head in a nod.

Brooke hates how easy it is to grip her arm and twist until  _snap_.

She holds it together, prodding the bone back into the proper place and waiting until she feels the familiar twist of healing pulling it back.

Brooke finds all the broken and fractured places, waiting until she feels Sam's battered body trying to heal itself before she moves on. Wrists, hip, nose, ribs.

She has to press her fingers against right rib six and push until Sam gasps out to get her body to register that pain amongst all the others, and Brooke  _hates hates hates_  that pain is a trigger for the healing to kick in.

As she catalogs Sam's injuries, she figures out the most likely cause. The four fractured ribs and one broken one probably came from a series of kicks when she was already down. The broken arm came from a brutal twist. Wrists were impact breaks from catching a fall on a hard floor. The broken nose was from a punch. The patch of amethyst bruising spreading across her stomach was internal bleeding probably caused by the same kicks that fractured her ribs. The blue-violet patches spreading over her thighs were from hands. The dark blotchy mess of her throat was from someone trying to strangle her into submission.

She remembers Connie grabbing her arm and saying  _she's bleeding_ meaningfully, and she stays away, figuring that Sam has had too many invasions of privacy for Brooke to follow the trail of injuries there. There's nothing she can do for bleeding except stitches, and that's too much unnecessary pain for something that will heal by itself if left alone.

And when she is done, Brooke kneels in front of Sam and leans forward so they are looking into each other's eyes and says  _tell me a name, Samantha._ because that is the cruelty of it, that Sam knew his name, his life, his hopes and dreams and story the second he touched her.

And Sam breathes out a name and a city and a home and Brooke gets up and walks out and explains the damage to Adam and Connie and then she drags Connie away and repeats the name.

Connie smiles, a mean, vicious twist of her gentle mouth and there is nothing forgiving in her golden eyes.

This is the part humans never understand: they are made of monsters and saints, dreams and hopes and nightmares and violence, and they have both the capability for kindness and cruelty in equal measures.

Brooke and Connie handle it. And when the blood is drying and both their hands are drip-red and they find the box under the bed filled with rings and bracelets and necklaces, hair clips and earrings and pendants.

Connie hisses out  _trophies_.

Brooke lifts a delicate golden chain with a familiar small cross dangling from it.

The initials say  _STJ_ , but they both would have known the cross without them.

Later, they drop the cross into the Atlantic and never speak of any of it again. 

 

_forty_

Adrien and Nicky both know better than to question why Sam joins them more often than not, or what's wrong with her.

Sam becomes a fixture in their friendship, and finally, there's another girl around.

And it's all good, right up until Brooke looks at Adrien and realizes that he likes Sam and that is exactly what she doesn't need right now.

She warns Adrien off of her, and continues to talk to Sam over cigarettes and sleepless nights. 

 

_forty- one_

Sam kisses Adrien, and Brooke goes tense for a moment.

Adrien has issues with being startled by touches that he doesn't anticipate, and she watches his reactions carefully.

He relaxes under Sam's touch, and if Brooke believed in a god she would thank him. 

 

_forty- two_

Adrien comes to her with hellfire in his blue eyes and asks if she knew.

Brooke doesn't like to make a habit of lying to Adrien. "Yes."

"What happened to him?"

Brooke recalls Connie's grim smile and bloody hands and a golden cross falling into the ocean. "Nothing they can prove."

Adrien glares. Brooke rolls her eyes. "Me. Connie. Bloody. Slow."

The hellfire in his eyes dims a little. " _Good_."  


_forty- three_

She's more surprised when Nicky asks her if she knew.

 _Sam certainly didn't tell him._  "Yes."

After a few minutes, Nicky caves. "She brought Adam when she went to tell Alfred. Adam told me."

Brooke blinks and remembers plans for today involving a red tulip and confessions that couldn't have happened. "Oh, Nicky, I'm sorry."

Nicky closes his eyes. "I know."

 

_forty- four_

Sam and Adrien break up. 

 

_forty- five_

Contrary to popular belief, she doesn't end up in Adrien's bed very often. They're best friends, and she prefers to leave their relationship platonic.

The first time they had stumbled into a bed together was during the Revolution, when Brooke was burning with rebellion and some part of Adrien had wanted to rebel, too. They were young and too much of them was made in the image of empires to be anything but greedy. It'd been rough and fast and Adrien left hickeys on her like landmarks and she'd left scratches down his back and it was exactly what they both needed.

Brooke remembers every single time, because she remembers everything. The majority of their hookups are unimportant, but that first time hadn't been.

It hadn't been unimportant when she'd pressed Adrien into her mattress seven months after Philip had died. It hadn't been unimportant when Adrien had come to her after Hadley had been created from his land at a Continental meeting and asked her  _yes or no?_  and then pulled her into a closet and made her believe in religion for approximately two minutes as the world went white.

It isn't unimportant now, when Adrien and Sam have broken up and that hurt him and Brooke is offering up the most primal sort of comfort she can give.

Physicality without risk of misunderstanding or regret or damage to their friendship.

Brooke doesn't really believe in regret, and Adrien learned not to get attached to bedmates early. So when Adrien had looked at her in continental blue and asked  _yes or no_  she had said yes.

She had never regretted it, and she never regretted the subsequent times either.

They're more alike than they care to be, and understand each other in ways they wish they didn't. They could never be more than this and neither of them particularly cared to be more anyway.

So here they are, Adrien looking at her and Brooke asking  _yes or no?_  and Adrien saying  _yes_. 

 

_forty- six_

The day after, Adrien wakes her up by saying  _hey wanna spar_ and she groans.

Usually, sex is enough to work out the emotion, but they had resorted to fighting almost as many times.

She yanks on clothes and ties up her hair because Adrien is a dirty cheater who pulls hair.

Nicky is already sitting on the back of her couch with a cup of coffee and a series of hickeys up his neck from wherever he went last night. Brooke frowns at him. "Get off the back of my couch you  _heathen_." Nicky just laughs.

Adrien has already shoved most of the furniture over to the walls and Brooke sighs.

She stops being annoyed when they actually start fighting, because she always underestimates how fast Adrien is and she actually has to  _try_.

Nicky judges, calling out points whenever they manage to hit one another.

Somewhere around 13-15, Adrien loses the tenseness he's been carrying since the breakup, and Brooke smiles as she sweeps his legs out from under him.

Later, Adrien will kiss her forehead and thank her, and Brooke will look at him and tilt her head and ask what for.

 

_forty- seven_

Spring of 1830 brings Lucinda, who comes over to Brooke with a confidence not often seen in teenage girls of this time period and bluntly tells Brooke she's beautiful.

They meet in the spring, and by the fall, Luce has been disowned and has moved into Brooke's Manhattan apartment, and Brooke should know better but apparently, she never repeats her mistakes, she just makes new and even worse ones.

A month into living together, she finds out Luce paints. 

 

_forty- eight_

Loving another artist is different.

It's the smell of paint and the easel by the window, the smudges of paint and charcoal they find in the bath. It's the way Luce looks at her, the way she says  _say something in /insert language here/_  and Brooke always does.

It's supposed to be hard to love an artist, but loving Luce is one of the easiest things Brooke's ever done. 

 

_forty- nine_

Eventually, Adrien and Nicky find out, but they learned their lesson with Philip and don't try to talk her out of it.

Luce charms them mercilessly, and Brooke loves her even more for it. 

 

_fifty_

The problem is that girls are not supposed to do this. Girls are supposed to kiss boys and lie back and have children. Girls aren't supposed to look at other girls and love them and touch them like this.

Luce pretends that it doesn't hurt to be cut off from her family, but it does. It hurts her so much and Brooke shouldn't be astounded by human cruelty anymore, but she is.

Somedays Luce wakes up and just looks at her and says, "You're real, right?" And Brooke can't do anything more than smile and respond, "As can be."

They get a collie and it obviously loves Luce more, but Brooke can't blame it. 

Luce is an artist and she loves the way artists do, ruthlessly, with every molecule of her entire being, and Brooke thinks she might just ruin her.

They might ruin each other.

They aren't supposed to do this, but Brooke has done so many things that she wasn't supposed to do already, what's one more?

 

_fifty- one_

Luce stays, and Brooke starts to think that she might be allowed to keep this one thing.

And then, in 1834, a man comes to her door, asking after  _Lucinda Kingsley_ , calling himself her father like he hadn't disowned her when she was fifteen, and Brooke knows the clock is ticking. 

 

_fifty- two_

It's a threat that would cut her off from her sister, mother, and brother. Luce is crying when she leaves, and Brooke cries too.

Luce gets married in June to a respectable man her family picked out, and Brooke goes and gets absurdly drunk with Nicky. 

 

_fifty- three_

Luce comes around whenever Stephen goes away. Stephen, of course, knows, but considering that Luce is young and beautiful and from money and knows exactly how many women he's solicited for sex and how awful of a businessman he is, he can't say anything.

Luce hates it. She says she hates that house, where all the servants watch her to report any mistakes to Stephen. She hates being back in society (apparently, she'd been off at finishing school this entire time, and not living on the other side of the city).

She comes around with bruises on her face one day, and Brooke sees red.

"Say the word and I'll get rid of him." Brooke says, and means it.

Luce offers a grim smile, and they don't speak of it again.

One day, Luce kisses her and says  _let's run away_. Brooke says  _upstate, I know a place in Albany_. 

 

_fifty- four_

Everything they planned falls apart when Luce learns she's pregnant. 

 

_fifty- five_

Luce had gotten sick so often, and spent the last trimester confined to her bed.

Brooke spends her free time reading up on complications of childbirth and sneaking over when Stephen isn't home.

Brooke had always thought that even if Stephen didn't love Luce, he'd be there when she delivered.

He isn't. Brooke is there, and Luce squeezes her hand so tight she might have actually broken it.

The air is pierced by a wail, soon followed by another one.

Luce smiles, sweat-damp hair clinging to her face. "Twins." She says wonderingly.

Brooke smiles back. 

 

_fifty- six_

It takes the doctors a while to realize that Luce isn't recovering from childbirth.

It takes even longer for them to figure out what she's sick with.

And syphilis doesn't have a cure. 

 

_fifty- seven_

She gives Stephen a black eye after Luce's funeral, and only the two children dressed in black clutching his hands stops her from killing him.

Brooke can't stand being around the twins most of the time, when they look so much like Luce it's physically painful. She keeps her promise to watch over them, but she does it from a distance. She goes to see them sometimes when Stephen is gone, and tells them stories of their mother both because they deserve to know her and because it annoys Stephen.

She tries to stay busy enough that sometimes she wakes up and doesn't immediately think of Luce. She wears Philip's ring on her necklace and now she has two anniversaries where she lays roses and lilacs on graves.

 _No more_ , Brooke thinks silently.  _No more humans. Not like this_.

It took her three humans to get it through her head, which is funny-  _three's a charm_ \- and not all at once. 

 

_fifty- eight_

Callie has a strange sort of magnetism that Brooke suspects might be part of her state-talent. It might not be.

Either way, somehow she draws Austin and Brooke in, and somehow it works.

For the first time since Luce, Brooke feels completely awake. 

 

_fifty- nine_

It's surprisingly easy to love Austin.

Of course, Nicky always said that her and Adrien love easily. 

It's thrilling to have an equal match, someone as strong as she is. 

 

_sixty_

Of course, the cost of being equally matched is that they're opposites in every way. 

Austin's agricultural and she's industrial. Brooke is a traditional Catholic but an agnostic in reality and Austin wears his cross, well, religiously. Brooke's as northern as they come and Austin is more southern than  _Ginny_  these days. Austin watches and calculates risk, Brooke wings it.

They fight and they make-up and they fight again. 

And one day, Brooke gives up on trying to fix it. 

 

_sixty- one_

Addison gets sick in 1854- the conflicts leave her bleeding and she doesn't heal as fast as the rest of them. 

Even accounting for just being a territory, she shouldn't be healing so slowly, and none of them can figure out  _why_. 

Austin tears through the library and when he can't find anything he asks Brooke for help and she agrees because this is her family too. 

They work through the medical section, splitting up the foreign language books. 

It takes a month before they find the answer in a German medical journal. 

Hemophilia.

Addison smiles weakly when they tell her and points out the irony of Bleeding Kansas. 

 

_sixty- two_

Alfred recalls them to Philadelphia.

She's barely finished unpacking by the time Roscoe starts whining and pawing at the door. 

It's a good excuse to get out of what's bound to become chaos in a few hours, so she clips Roscoe's leash to his collar and goes off to find a park. 

When she comes back, Roscoe gets ahead of her inside, which wouldn't be an issue except that he's a huge freaking great dane. 

So, of course, he knocks into another state, and the other state knocks into her. 

Roscoe licks her face, and she pushes him away with a grimace. "Ros, stop that."

Will is sprawled out on the landing across from her, and Brooke internally winces at the realization that that was who Roscoe barrelled into. 

She apologizes, he offers her a hand up, and Brooke realizes that he's an inch taller than her. And that he's attractive. 

And checking her out. 

So she doesn't feel guilty about doing a once-over twice at all. 

 

_sixty- three_

There are three almost-kisses that mostly leave Brooke frustrated. 

And then Will asks about Luce and Adrien runs his mouth and then he asks if she's gay  _which what the actual fuck_. 

So she tells him about Luce and that she goes both ways because that definitely needs to be clarified if this is ever going anywhere. 

Nicky judges her taste in men, which, well, fair. (Seriously. Asking if she was gay. What even.)

Roscoe knocks up Del's dog because he likes to fuck things up for her. 

The puppies are born, and Will brushes back a strand of her hair and she is so very very  _frustrated_. 

 

_sixty- four_

She kisses him on New Years. 

 

_sixty- five_

Daniel secedes, and everything starts to fall apart. 

 

_sixty- six_

Will finds her up in the attic and sits with her while she reads the Scarlett Letter and it's peaceful despite all his questions. 

 

_sixty- seven_

She holes up in her closet after Antietam and buries her face in Roscoe's short fur and tries not to cry because it has sunk in that she's fighting against family.

And then Will comes, and she breaks. 

She buries her face in his shoulder and cries. 

 

_sixty- eight_

They've been too busy with the war to worry about sex, but then Will comes back from Gettysburg a mess of bandages with that stupid  _everything's fine_ smile and she decides that enough is enough and that she's done with teasing. 

(The first time is good, the second time is  _better_.)

 

_sixty- nine_

Will gets out of bed early in the morning to go off to fight a battle and asks if she'll still be there when he gets back. 

Brooke says  _no promises_  but means  _of course_. 

 

_seventy_

He kisses her at Appomattox in front of half the states and Alfred. 

 

_seventy- one_

At some point, Brooke realizes that Will makes things quiet.

He jokes about her insomnia and she doesn't tell him this is most sleep she's gotten since  _Luce_. 

Usually, she finds her quiet from storms or heights- either can make her mind stop racing long enough to fall asleep. It's why she has both her bed and couch against exterior walls with windows- so that she could hear the rain easily. It's why she climbs all those steps in Trinity Church to sit up in the steeple. 

But Will talks or runs his fingers through her hair or holds her as he sleeps and it's  _quiet_ and sometimes it's enough that she can sleep. 

 

_seventy- two_

And then she realizes that she loves him, so she tells him. 

Will doesn't say anything. 

 

_seventy- three_

He writes her love letters like some Jane Austen story and she's so happy she cries. 

She returns the favor- digs out her sketchbook and shows him how much she draws him. 

 

_seventy- four_

Will kisses her, says _I love you too_  and Brooke kisses him again. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is the bastard child of like three different NY-centric drafts I had that somehow morphed into this 7000 word monster. 
> 
> I love comments so feel free to leave questions/constructive critiscism/comments!
> 
> More about Brooke's knives here: https://magicandlight.tumblr.com/post/177367993836/if-anyone-was-curious-about-brookes-knives-here


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